"Full Moon + Jeremy Sinden = A Full ..."

Overall

Performance

Story

Like Frederick Davidson, Jeremy Sinden gets the inner meaning of Wodehouse, extracting every drop of irony, sarcasm, mock-melodrama or just plain humor from every single line. His vocal portrayals are pitch-perfect; one gets a visual image of every character. His timing and pacing are impeccable. His diction is downright Harovian. Or Etonian, take your pick.

But then again, like any actor with a great script, Sinden has a lot to work with here. Full Moon is one of the highest spots in the Wodehouse bookshelf, a tumultuous romp through the spreading park lands and messuages of Blandings Castle, where:

Colonel Egbert (complete with service revolver) and Lady Hermione Wedge (who looks like a cook) find a rich son-in-law

Bill Lister ("Blister" to his pals) finds he isn't cut out for the life artistic but is cut out for life with Prudence ("that little squirt") Garland

Lord Emsworth ("that woolen-headed peer") finds peace when everybody finally clears out of his house and leaves him with his prize porker, Empress of Blandings and his favorite reading, "On the Care of the Pig", by the great Augustus Whiffle

And the Hon. Galahad Threepwood finds he can make it all come about with an adroit mixture of lies, half-truths, tall tales, brisk staff work...and putting the Empress in Veronica's bedroom.

Don't worry, I haven't given anything away. In Wodehouse everyone--at least, all the deserving ones--get exactly what they want. The fun--and there is a great deal of fun here, served up with no unstinting hand--is seeing how they get it. Jeremy Sinden makes Wodehouse in your ear buds even better that Wodehouse off the printed page.

Full Moon

The moon beamed down genially on the turrets and battlements of Blandings Castle. Sleep, however, eluded Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth. To be compelled to play host to his younger son, Freddie, was enough; add his sister Veronica and a chap called Tipton Plimsoll and you have a situation at which the doughtiest earl might quail...

John says:"Full Moon + Jeremy Sinden = A Full Hand"

"Wodehouse to the Rescue"

Overall

Performance

Story

Evelyn Waugh was about right when he said, “Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.”

This classic from the Monarch or Royal of the Master—he apparently used both brands of typewriter in the course of a longish authorial career—has certainly released me more than once from dull hours and duller cares. In a bookshelf with more high spots than a can-can line, Code of the Woosters is one of the highest; a story that delights no matter how many times I listen to it—and I generally fit it in at least once a year, in the autumn, the season in which the story is set.

The tonic effect of Wodehouse is, I believe, heightened with repeated listening. The rhythm of his sentences and then the almost bulletproof good humor of his perspective, begin to seep into your system and you notice bits of his Drones Club jargon in your own speech. Rather than say you don’t want to see someone, you observe that you’d run a mile in tight shoes to avoid them. Instead of merely feeling relieved, you start singing like a relieved nightingale. Don’t fight it. It means the inoculation against Modern Times is taking effect and the cure is working.

I’m not going to say a word about the plot because with Woodhouse plot is everything and it’s my object here to give away nothing. He once said that, on average, he generated around 400 pages of notes to work out the plot of one of his books—a book that generally ran half that length. Let’s just say that I’ve always suspected the notes for this plot may have run a tad longer. It in complex, contorted and convoluted, all words which, in the world according to Wodehouse, are good things.

One of the peculiarities about audio books is that, if there are different recordings of a book, the version you first heard becomes THE version; no others will satisfy. This is especially so with a writer like Wodehouse, where every inflection makes a difference. Years ago I first listened to this version of this book on audiocassette. So the fact that I think Jonathan Cecil is at his very best on this one may be due merely to my early, Lorenzian imprinting. Nevertheless, there it is.

The Code of the Woosters: Jeeves to the Rescue

Witty Wodehouses�s best-loved creation is the master-servant team of Bertie Wooster, the charming nitwit, and Jeeves, his effortlessly superior valet and protector. Newsweek says "they are at their best in The Code of the Woosters." Newsweek says "they are at their best in The Code of the Woosters."

Philip says:"Best Wodehouse narrator"

"A Novelist, A Playboy, Criminals & ..."

Overall

Performance

Story

Wodehouse is most famous for two series, the Bertie and Jeeves novels and stories and what Wodehouse himself once referred to as “the Blandings Castle saga”.

Those who have explored the Master’s canon a little more deeply are familiar with two other delightful recurring characters: Ukridge (“that foe of the human race”) and the nephew-rich Mr. Mulliner. Below that strata are what might be identified as the “Valley Fields Chronicles”, a series of loosely-connected novels that revolve around that much-abused suburb, including such gems as Sam the Sudden (1925), Big Money (1931) and Ice in the Bedroom (1961).

Then there are all the, for lack of a better term, “one-offs”: novels with characters that never recur elsewhere, each set in a place that seldom if ever figures in other tales. Among these particular delicacies, Hot Water is one of the most delectable.

Admittedly, Gordon (“Oily” to his friends) Carlisle and Gerty (the tree on which the fruit of his larcenous life hangs) are recurring characters (most delightfully in Cocktail Time, 1958). But the main characters, Packy Franklyn, Lady Beatrice Bracken, Blair Eggleston, Senator Opal, his charming daughter Jane, the Gedges and the “Veek”, while all recognizable Wodehouse types, are all indigenous to this one story.

And what a tangled, funny, sweet, ridiculous story it is. There’s no point in summing up the plot because that would ruin the fun. Just imagine what a U.S. Senator, having been elected and re-elected for years on a sound “Dry” platform, would do if a woman—a woman who wants him to grant her husband a particular political favor—suddenly came into possession of his latest letter…to…his…bootlegger.

Jonathan Cecil is very near the top of his game on this one—not quite as good as his performances on Young Men in Spats or Uncle Fred in the Springtime, but very close. Occasionally he fails to pace himself, running out of breath on some of Wodehouse’s longer sentences but, while disappointing, this doesn’t get in the way of the fun. Every character comes through your earphones as a three-dimensional individual, and no nuance is missed.

Hot Water

The house-party at Chateau Blissac, Brittany features a rather odd array of guests this year. Mr. J. Wellington Gedge is hoping for some peace and quiet while his wife takes herself off for a while. She, however, has invited numerous visitors to the chateau, to whom he will have to play reluctant host. Senator Opal and his daughter are expected, and so is the chateau's handsome owner Vicomte de Blissac.

Leslie says:"One of my favorites from audible"

New Releases

Daft Wee Stories

Daft Wee Stories is Limmy’s first book. It is a collection of stories. There are short stories. There are longer stories. There are stupid stories. There are thoughtful stories. There are upside-down stories. There are normal-way-up stories. There are weird stories. There are less weird stories. There are really weird stories. There is nothing else like it. Have a listen.

The Good, the Bad, and the Smug

Mordak isn't bad as far as goblin kings go, but when someone - or something - starts pumping gold into the human kingdoms, it puts his rule in serious jeopardy. Suddenly he's locked in an arms race with a species whose arms he once considered merely part of a calorie-controlled diet. Helped by an elf with a background in journalism and a master's degree in being really pleased with herself, Mordak sets out to discover what on Earth (if indeed, that's where he is) is going on.

Cowering in Place: A Mark Greene (Boston Strong) Misadventure

Boston is under assault. Caught between the Islamists' bombs and the government ban of consumer goods detected in the bomb fragments, Bostonians must choose: accommodation or struggle, resignation or revolt, appeasement or rebellion. So far the good people of Boston have chosen accommodation, resignation, and appeasement. On the struggle, revolt, rebellion side is Mark Greene.

The Diary of a...Father: Year One Boxset

Not only is Graham Peterson unlucky in his choice of careers, he's also been terrible with women throughout his adult life. That changes when he meets Alison on a work night out. Unfortunately for Graham, however, things change so drastically that within a month of dating Alison, he gets the news that he's about to become a father for the first time.

Me & Moe

Sarcastic and witty, 29-year-old Alexandria Swanson is working her way up the on-air chain at a political talk radio station in San Francisco when a New York media giant buys the station and turns it into a Top 40 music format. In order to keep her job, Alex is shoved into the midday program as the resident dating expert. There's just one problem: Alex still lives with her grandparents, and her dating life is pathetic. She enlists the help of her celebrity-obsessed grandma, Moe, and her ex-military grandpa to teach her about dating. Her hilarious, poor-sport attitude makes station ratings fly off the charts as her morals fly out the window. Alex is soon forced to explore her own tragic past as she wades through her fears of falling in love.

The Petrified Man: Annotated

"The Petrified Man" is a satirical story written in 1871. The hero of the story is the newly appointed editor of the local newspaper in Virginia City, Nevada. Taking advantage of his position, he decides to put the end to the craze for "natural wonders", including fake fossils, that has swept the West.

The Cactus

Trysdale was in love. He had embellished his accomplishments and his beloved had placed him squarely on a pedestal. How was he to know that one of his 'embellishments' would be his undoing? Irony abounds in this short love story gone wrong by O. Henry.

After Twenty Years (Annotated)

"After Twenty Years" is about two different characters, two different philosophies, and two different value systems. Bob is materialistic; he wants to get a lot of money and doesn't care how he gets it. Jimmy is conservative and wants a good and socially useful job, a home, and a family. These different philosophies take them on different paths. After 20 years Jimmy has a good job; he likes his work and family. Bob has made a lot of money, but money hasn't really done him good.

A Date with Angel: And Other Things That Weren't Supposed to Happen

Kim could tell at a glance Angel wasn't the average attractive yet poorly disguised extraterrestrial scout sent to assess Earth's defenses before the inevitable alien invasion. Angel's memory loss cover story? Lame. Robbing a passing ruffian of his shirt to cover her naked body? NOT a good way to avoid attracting attention! As a science fiction geek, Kim felt herself uniquely qualified to watch Angel and thwart her dark mission...once the alien got around to it.

Ordinary Joe

A brilliant, fast-paced comedy about life behind the scenes in the film business and how to survive when your greatest fantasy comes true and threatens to wreck your perfectly ordinary life. After the movie, when the credits roll up you might see his name flash past - Joseph West - and think nothing of it. Not an actor, not a director, Joe is just one of the money men, kept at arms distance from the talent. Until one night in New York the talent comes calling.

Bite the Big One!: A Paranormal Romantic Comedy

Jennifer Owens has her fair share of troubles, what with being pestered by dead people and having to dodge the spells cast by her best friend, Becky, who is the worst witch in the history of witchcraft. On top of that, she has to contend with a sex-mad octogenarian who seems to be stalking her. She doesn't think things can get any worse. But then she becomes the target of a band of vampires who wanted to protect a secret that only she can unlock, if only she can figure out what it is!

New Jerusalem News: A Novel

The summer season on Cape Cod is over - now it's time for the real fun to begin. Dominick is always just passing through. He is a professional houseguest who follows the sun and the leisure class from resort to resort. But this winter he lingers on a quaint New England island and, in spite of his best intentions, becomes involved in the travails of his eccentric geriatric hosts. An environmental protest against a proposed liquid natural gas terminal turns ugly, and by accident and happenstance Dominick becomes a mistaken suspect in terrorist bombings.

Bennington Girls Are Easy: A Novel

Cassandra Puffin and Sylvie Furst met in high school but cement what they ardently believe will be everlasting friendship on Bennington's idyllic Vermont campus. Graduation sees Sylvie moving to New York City, where, later in their 20s, Cassandra joins her. These early, delirious years are spent decorating their Fort Greene apartment with flea market gems, dating "artists", and trying to figure out what they're doing with their lives.

The Wishing Tree

When Keith Knight sets out one morning to buy a tin of custard from his local shop, he didn't bank on falling through the fabric between his world and a land of fantasy. Mistaken as the "Knight" from afar who, it is said, will lift the Mushroom King's curse on the land, he must face dragons, avoid swamp donkeys and negotiate the "forest of certain death" to seek out the elusive and dangerous Baba Yaga in order to complete her three impossible tasks if he has any hope of reaching the Wishing Tree and returning home.

Jailhouse Doc: A Doctor in the County Jail

Dr. William Wright gave up a suburban practice as an ear surgeon to become the doctor at Colorado's maximum-security prison. After that, running a medical clinic at the county jail should be a snap, right? Oh, brother. Hoards of desperate people fresh from the streets, homeless addicts, illegal aliens, and gangbangers all ruled by a corrupt sheriff and his concubine sidekick made the supermax look almost pastoral.

Witches Be Crazy

The beloved King Ik is dead, and there was barely time to check his pulse before the royal throne was supporting the suspiciously shapely backside of an impostor pretending to be Ik's beautiful, long-lost daughter. With the land's heroic hunks busy drooling all over themselves, there's only one man left who can save the kingdom of Jenair. His name is Dungar Loloth, a rural blacksmith turned innkeeper, a surly hermit, and an all-around nobody oozing toward middle age, compensating for a lack of height, looks, charm, and tact with guts and an attitude.

Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party

Cornelius P. "Fatty" O'Leary and his wife, Betty, plan a vacation in Ireland for his 40th birthday, where they will tour his ancestral homeland and relax in the countryside. Almost immediately, things go terribly wrong: the seats in economy class on the plane are too small; the country hotel's dinner spread and bathroom fixtures leave much to be desired; and the down-to-earth O'Learys find their fellow guests are more than a little snobbish.

The Manservant

Anthony Gowers assists guests at a high-end London hotel with the kind of requests that can't be filled from a room-service menu. His reward: lavish tips and a closet full of cashmere. Then a client's after-hours entertainment ends in a tabloid scandal, and Anthony quickly becomes the city's best-dressed unemployed person...In desperation Anthony takes a position in the countryside as personal butler to Lord Shanderson. As a former royal footman, Anthony is well versed in the peerage's peculiar ways.

Never Too Late

Clare Wilson is starting over. She's had it with her marriage to a charming serial cheater. Even her own son thinks she's given his father too many chances. With the support of her sisters, Maggie and Sarah, she's ready to move on. Facing her 40th birthday, Clare is finally feeling the rush of unadulterated freedom.

Never Too Late

Clare Wilson is starting over. She's had it with her marriage to a charming serial cheater. Even her own son thinks she's given his father too many chances. With the support of her sisters, Maggie and Sarah, she's ready to move on. Facing her 40th birthday, Clare is finally feeling the rush of unadulterated freedom.

Double Whammy

A twisted tale of murder in the world of big-stakes bass fishing tournaments. Filled with ex-wives, evangelists, and an armed pit-bull, this is a story that could only be concocted by Carl Hiaasen, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New York Times best-selling author, and czar of Florida noir fiction.

Good Omens

The world will end on Saturday. Next Saturday. Just before dinner, according to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655. The armies of Good and Evil are amassing and everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except that a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture. And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist.

The Knockoff: A Novel

When Imogen returns to work at Glossy after six months away, she can barely recognize her own magazine. Eve, fresh out of Harvard Business School, has fired "the gray hairs", put the managing editor in a supply closet, stopped using the landlines, and hired a bevy of manicured and questionably attired underlings who text and tweet their way through meetings.

The Screwtape Letters

A masterpiece of satire, this classic has entertained and enlightened readers the world over with its sly and ironic portrayal of human life from the vantage point of Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to "Our Father Below". At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, C. S. Lewis gives us the correspondence of the worldly-wise old devil to his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man. The Screwtape Letters is the most engaging and humorous account of temptation - and triumph over it - ever written.

Fat Chance

Meet Zoe and Greg Milton, a married couple who have let themselves go a bit. Zoe was a stunner in her college days, but the intervening decades have added five stone, and removed most of her self-esteem. Greg's rugby-playing days are well and truly behind him, thanks to countless pints of beer and chicken curry. When Elise, a radio DJ and Zoe's best friend, tells them about a new competition, it seems like the perfect opportunity to turn their lives around.

Go the F--k to Sleep

Academy Award nominee Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) rocks this mock bedtime story, capturing a hilarious range of emotions as the voice of a father struggling to get his child to sleep. Go the F**k to Sleep is a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don’t always send a toddler sailing blissfully off to dreamland.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle - and people in general - has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands.

Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.

China Rich Girlfriend: A Novel

Kevin Kwan, best-selling author of Crazy Rich Asians, is back with a wickedly funny new novel of social climbing, secret emails, art-world scandal, lovesick billionaires, and the outrageous story of what happens when Rachel Chu, engaged to marry Asia's most eligible bachelor, discovers her birth father.

The First Bad Man: A Novel

Here is Cheryl, a tightly-wound, vulnerable woman who lives alone, with a perpetual lump in her throat. She is haunted by a baby boy she met when she was six, who sometimes recurs as other people's babies. Cheryl is also obsessed with Phillip, a philandering board member at the women's self-defense nonprofit where she works. She believes they've been making love for many lifetimes, though they have yet to consummate in this one.

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

After a long and eventful life, Allan Karlsson ends up in a nursing home, believing it to be his last stop. The only problem is that he's still in good health, and in one day, he turns 100. A big celebration is in the works, but Allan really isn't interested (and he'd like a bit more control over his vodka consumption). So he decides to escape. He climbs out the window in his slippers and embarks on a hilarious and entirely unexpected journey, involving, among other surprises, a suitcase stuffed with cash.

NPCs

What happens when the haggling is done and the shops are closed? When the quest has been given, the steeds saddled, and the adventurers are off to their next encounter? They keep the world running, the food cooked, and the horses shoed, yet what adventurer has ever spared a thought or concern for the Non-Player Characters? In the town of Maplebark, four such NPCs settle in for a night of actively ignoring the adventurers drinking in the tavern when things go quickly and fatally awry.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of 30 million souls, to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet.

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Savior's pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But there's no one who loves Josh more (except maybe "Maggie," Mary of Magdalan) and Biff isn't about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight.

A Confederacy of Dunces

The hero of John Kennedy Toole's incomparable, Pulitzer Prize-winning comic classic is one Ignatius J. Reilly, "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter". His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Back on Earth with nothing more to show for his long, strange trip through time and space than a ratty towel and a plastic shopping bag, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination.

The Woman Who Stole My Life

In her own words, Stella Sweeney is just "an ordinary woman living an ordinary life with her husband and two teenage kids", working for her sister in their neighborhood beauty salon. Then one day she is struck by a serious illness that lands her in the hospital for months.

You Have to F--king Eat

Emmy Award-winning actor Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Malcom in the Middle) follows in the exasperated footsteps of Samuel L. Jackson, giving voice to the long-suffering father whose indifferent child will just not eat in this hilarious follow-up to Adam Mansbach's international best seller, Go the F--k to Sleep.

Notorious Nineteen: A Stephanie Plum Novel

After a slow summer of chasing low-level skips for her cousin Vinnie's bail bonds agency, Stephanie Plum finally lands an assignment that could put her checkbook back in the black. Geoffrey Cubbin, facing trial for embezzling millions from Trenton's premier assisted-living facility, has mysteriously vanished from the hospital after an emergency appendectomy. Now it's on Stephanie to track down the con man. Unfortunately, Cubbin has disappeared without a trace, a witness, or his money-hungry wife. Rumors are stirring that he must have had help with the daring escape...or that maybe he never made it out of his room alive.

Go the F--k to Sleep

Academy Award nominee Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) rocks this mock bedtime story, capturing a hilarious range of emotions as the voice of a father struggling to get his child to sleep. Go the F**k to Sleep is a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don’t always send a toddler sailing blissfully off to dreamland.

Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.

You Have to F--king Eat

Emmy Award-winning actor Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Malcom in the Middle) follows in the exasperated footsteps of Samuel L. Jackson, giving voice to the long-suffering father whose indifferent child will just not eat in this hilarious follow-up to Adam Mansbach's international best seller, Go the F--k to Sleep.

Bluebeard: The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988)

Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist painter who we meet late in life and see struggling (like all of Vonnegut's key characters) with the dregs of unresolved pain and the consequences of brutality. Loosely based on the legend of Bluebeard (best realized in Bela Bartok's one-act opera), the novel follows Karabekian through the last events in his life that is heavy with women, painting, artistic ambition, artistic fraudulence, and as of yet unknown consequence.

Seduction and Snacks

Claire is a 20-something, single mom who grudgingly helps her best friend sell sex toys while she attempts to make enough money to start her own business to give her foul-mouthed, but extremely loveable (when he's asleep) toddler a better life. When Carter, the one-night-stand from her past that changed her life forever, shows up in her hometown bar without any recollection of her besides her unique chocolate scent, Claire will make it a point that he remembers her this time. With Carter's undisguised shock at suddenly finding out he has a four-year-old son and Claire's panic that her stretch marks and slim-to-none bedroom experience will send the man of her dreams heading for the hills, the pair will do whatever they can to get their happily ever after.

Not QUITE The Classics

Where the art of improvisation meets the art of literature. Based on the improv game First Line, Last Line, Colin Mochrie of Whose Line Is It Anyway? fame, puts a unique spin on works of classic literature. Taking the first line and last line from classic books and poems, Colin recasts these familiar stories in his own trademark offbeat style.

Woody Allen - writer, director, and actor - can now add narrator to his long list of achievements, as he’s teamed up with Audible to make his best-selling books available in audio for the very first time. The Woody Allen Collection, featuring four of his classic short-story books, highlights the comedian’s biting wit and signature style - performed as only he can. These hilarious stories examine the deepest of human questions from the highest heights of absurdity.

The Horse in My Garage and Other Stories

The Horse in My Garage and Other Stories is a hilarious addition to Patrick F. McManus’s existing work in humor. The author weighs in on his childhood, everyday life, and outdoor tales with his typical exaggerated commentary that will elicit a belly laugh from all types of listeners. Read about the antics of Patrick’s friends Rancid Crabtree and Retch Sweeney in such stories as “Shaping Up for the Hunt” and “Bear Hunters”, and much more!

Witches Be Crazy

The beloved King Ik is dead, and there was barely time to check his pulse before the royal throne was supporting the suspiciously shapely backside of an impostor pretending to be Ik's beautiful, long-lost daughter. With the land's heroic hunks busy drooling all over themselves, there's only one man left who can save the kingdom of Jenair. His name is Dungar Loloth, a rural blacksmith turned innkeeper, a surly hermit, and an all-around nobody oozing toward middle age, compensating for a lack of height, looks, charm, and tact with guts and an attitude.

If You Didn't Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat?: Misadventures in Hunting, Fishing, and the Wilds of Suburbia

Whether he is accidentally cooking his brain with hand warmers or yanking his lure away from a trophy fish just before it takes the bait, Bill Heavey can do no right. For almost a decade, he has chronicled his incompetence on the back page of Field & Stream, where his hilarious dispatches about life as a hapless outdoorsman who lives in suburbia have earned him legions of fans.

Deadeye Dick

Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors - a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb - Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe...and who we say we are.

Skippy Dies

This touching and uproarious novel by author Paul Murray made everyone’s best fiction of 2010 lists, including The Washington Post, Financial Times, Village Voice, and others. Why Skippy dies and what happens next is the mystery that links the boys of Dublin’s Seabrook College (Ruprecht Van Doren, the overweight genius obsessed with string theory; Carl, the teenager drug dealer and borderline psychotic; Philip Kilfether, the basketball-playing midget) to their parents and teachers in ways that no one could have imagined.

Between the Bridge and the River

Two childhood friends from Scotland and two illegitimate half-brothers from the deep South suffer and enjoy all manner of bizarre adventures that, it turns out, are somehow interconnected and, even more surprisingly, meaningful. The eclectic cast of characters features Socrates, Carl Jung, and Tony Randall, along with an ex-television evangelist with a penchant for booze, prostitutes, and uncomfortable knitwear who gets mugged in Miami by an almost pure-blooded Watusi warrior - and sets off on a road trip in a stolen motor home.

Hocus Pocus

Eugene Debs Hartke describes an odyssey from college professor to prison inmate to prison warden back again to prisoner in another of Vonnegut's bitter satirical explorations of how and where (and why) the American dream begins to die. Employing his characteristic narrative device - a retrospective diary in which the protagonist retraces his life at its end, a desperate and disconnected series of events here in Hocus Pocus show Vonnegut with his mask off and his rhetorical devices unshielded.

Palm Sunday

In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth.

Bellweather Rhapsody

Fifteen years ago, a murder/suicide in room 712 rocked the grand old Bellweather Hotel and the young bridesmaid who witnessed it. Now hundreds of high school musicians, including quiet bassoonist Rabbit Hatmaker and his brassy diva twin, Alice, have gathered in its cavernous, crumbling halls for the annual Statewide festival; the grown-up bridesmaid has returned to face her demons; and a snowstorm is forecast that will trap everyone on the grounds. Then one of the orchestra’s stars disappears—from room 712.

A Night of Blacker Darkness: Being the Memoir of Frederick Whithers As Edited by Cecil G. Bagsworth III

EXCLUSIVELY AVAILABLE IN AUDIONo one else has Dan Wells’ hilarious new novella - it’s not available in print, in ebook, by mobile phone text or Victorian phonograph. Audible is bringing it to you exclusively, for a limited time.The basic premise is this: it's 1817, and a man named Frederick Whithers is wallowing in jail for a crime he didn't commit, desperate to get out so he can go and commit it for real.

Falling for You

As a teen, Maddy Harvey was a bit of an ugly duckling. Luckily she's blossomed since then, and Maddy thanks God for this small miracle when a tall, handsome stranger comes to her rescue one starry summer's night. But instant attraction turns to disaster-in-the-making when Maddy learns the identity of her superman: Kerr McKinnon. Of all the colorful residents of the small Cotswold town of Ashcombe, why did it have to be him? Because, as family feuds go, the Montagues and the Capulets have nothing on the Harveys and the McKinnons.

The President of Vice: The Autobiography of Joe Biden

The Onion is proud to present The President of Vice: The Autobiography of Joe Biden. In this scandalous memoir, America's favorite politician discusses his early years, before he became ultimate wingman to the leader of the free world. For the first time ever “Diamond” Joe discusses the formative experiences of his life, including his childhood selling hooch in Scranton, his years cruising college campuses picking up co-eds in a Del Rio, the grade-A tang he plowed in the summer of '87, and his "sweet ass gig" as Senator of Delaware.

Wake Up, Sir!: A Novel

Alan Blair, the hero of Wake Up, Sir!, is a young, loony writer with numerous problems of the mental, emotional, sexual, spiritual, and physical variety. He's very good at problems. But luckily for Alan, he has a personal valet named Jeeves, who does his best to sort things out for his troubled master. And Alan does find trouble wherever he goes.